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Mortgage Lead Generation Can Double With Free Broker Marketing Advice

9 March, 2010 (12:31) | Business | By: admin

โ€œMany brokers, big and small, are disappointed with the quality and quantity of their website traffic. Based on this experience some even come to the wrong conclusion that the โ€œInternet doesn’t work for us,โ€โ€ states Keith Hunt Vice President of Camelot Marketing, a full service agency based in California.

โ€œIt’s not that the Internet doesn’t work, it’s how you work the Internet and understanding how it really functions. If brokers did, the internet would become an endless source for mortgage lead generation.โ€

For a limited time, Camelot Marketing is offering free, no risk consultations to help brokers with their online marketing. They will help with misconceptions surrounding the Internet and make recommendations on how to improve online presence.

โ€œHistorically brokers have used traditional advertising such as radio or print, hoping to find those consumers ready to act right away. Brokers are in control of the message and when it is delivered.โ€

But the complete opposite scenario exists on the Internet. After consumers have made an active decision to pursue a loan they search the Internet looking for a broker or information.

The Internet is a two-way pipeline and gives consumers access to more information and the choice of thousands of brokers. A search for โ€œmortgage brokerโ€ on Yahoo! serves up 920,000 listings. With so much competition the brokers’ website must appear on the first page of the search engine listings or the chance of a click through is very unlikely.โ€

โ€œWith so many listings surfers become impatient and adopt the attitude of โ€œgive me the information I want, give it to me now, and don’t waste my time.โ€ If a website does not meet basic requirements by loading quickly and providing relevant information surfers simply move on to the next listing.โ€

โ€˜Surfers will research information online but a high percentage will finalize the transaction offline. They may call with questions, or for security reasons, would rather provide personal data over the phone.โ€

โ€œDuring the free consultation we may not tell brokers what they want to hear. But those that follow the advice will get more quality website visitors. Increased presence will improve the quality of website visitors, online applications and incoming phone calls.โ€

โ€œTo take advantage, adjustments will have to be made, so the more aggressive brokers will benefit the most.โ€

โ€œWe hope brokers that do decide to work the Internet will call us for assistance,โ€ concludes Hunt.

For free consultation Keith Hunt can be reached at 909 987 1233 or through email keith@camelotmarketing.net.

Camelot Marketing as a full service agency based in California, has for 20 years specialized in working together with small and medium sized companies

Camelot serves clients in the mortgage, health, sports, and non-profit industries.

In recent years Camelot has developed proprietary website marketing programs.

Author: Anonymous
Source: free-articles

13 Easy Ways to Market Your Real Estate Website Offline

8 March, 2010 (15:31) | Real Estate | By: admin

Marketing your website is as important as having one. That’s why many real estate agencies spend a large amount of time and money promoting their websites online through search engines optimization, email marketing, and pay-per-click campaigns. These all-important strategies are great ways to direct traffic to your site but the marketing of your website will be incomplete without offline advertising. The good news is that there are easy ways to effectively market your website offline. Here are some ideas:

1. Use Corporate Stationary
It is extremely important to use every opportunity you get to market your website. Always print you web address on all your corporate stationary. This includes letterheads, fax cover sheets, envelopes, business cards, email signatures etc.

2. Drive Advertising with Company Vehicles
Printing magnetic decals with your company logo and web address is a cheap and effective way to advertise your website. An even cheaper alternative is to stick a bumper sticker with your details on your car or company transport.

3. Wear Your Website
Buy t-shirts and print you web address on it. Ask your employees to wear these t-shirts to the gym or make Fridays your t-shirt day at work. This is a fun and inexpensive way to market your company’s website.

4. Spread Flyers
Distribute flyers with you website’s details on it wherever you go. Carry a role of tape and flyers with you and put it up when you see an opportunity. Ask friends and family to help you distribute flyers by displaying it at their place of work.

5. Let your Voice Message Speak for You
Leave your website address on you voice message and encourage callers to visit the site for information. It is really as easy as that.

6. Utilize For Sale/On Show Boards
All real estate agencies use boards to indicate property for sale or show houses. Make sure that your web address is printed on these boards. By using a small space you can market your property listings effectively.

7. Mark Marketing Materials
Brochures, flyers and ads in the newspaper can be use to advertise you website. These marketing materials reach a large audience and can be very effective to drive traffic to you site.

8. Give It Away
Promotional giveaways are a great way to market your website offline. Promotional gift can be anything from mugs and pens to calendars and fridge magnets. These are things that people use everyday and provide you with a great opportunity to market your website.

9. Become a Sponsor
Sponsor the local school’s soccer jerseys and let them display you web address on the back of the jerseys or sponsor the prize for a competition. This will give you a change to give your website more exposure.

10. Use Digital Billboards
High traffic areas usually have a digital billboard next to the road. This is a golden opportunity for a real estate agent to market his or her website.

11. Stamp Your Mail
Make sure your website address is display on all mail and packages. Design a stamp with your URL engraved in it. Use red ink to stamp your website’s address on the envelope or package to make it stand out.

12. Network
Always carry your business card (with your web address printed on it) around with you. Attend networking events and hand out your business card to other business owners or contacts.

13. Word of Mouth
Ask family, friends and employees to tell potential clients about your website and the services you render.

Author: Elizabeth Mclachlan
Source: ezinearticles.com

Network Marketing Opportunities – Are They “Sales” Or “Word of Mouth”?

7 March, 2010 (10:31) | Business | By: admin

Network marketing opportunities have the habit of saying, “This really isn’t sales. We just share products with people.” They know most people do not like to sell and this is their way of softening it.

For me, it really did not help to get this kind of lie. It only meant that the disappointment was felt more when I found that it was sales. I found that by “just sharing” did not really help to sell the product.

Network Marketing Opportunities Are Really about Sales

I tried various approaches. We had some really good products like nutritional food bars and exceptional energy drinks. So I would eat these as my lunch before others in the lunch room. Once in a while someone would ask me about my lunch. They found it interesting and nutritious, but no one was interested in switching from sandwiches to food bars.

I later discovered that it is really not “word of mouth” advertising. Like when you see a good movie and tell your friends about it and they decide to go and see it too. In word of mouth advertising there is no personal benefit to the one giving the information. No vested interest.

My information however, was clearly linked to a benefit that I would get from it. They knew it and I knew it. I could feel a tenseness in myself as I talked about the product. I also felt the rejection when they did not go for it.

All this happened when I did my network marketing business the traditional way, the way my upline told me to do it. I had no experience in sales and neither did they. We were the blind leading the blind. It was awful!

Network Marketing Opportunities Are Discovering “Attraction Marketing”

Then I happened to be looking for something totally other on the Internet and bumped into Ann Sieg and the Renegade System. She too had come from a traditional background in network marketing which was not working for her. She then had discovered a whole new way of doing marketing. She called it “attraction marketing.”

Instead of looking for people who might like your product by talking to scores of people and finding one or two who are interested, she had discovered a way of attracting the people who are looking for that product. Instead of chasing people to buy products, she developed a way of getting people to chase her for the product through leveraging the Internet.

She teaches that information is the currency of the Internet. By sharing information about your quality products, people can educate themselves. Those that are interested will then contact you for the product. The information is given as information rather than as a sales pitch. It is given about a whole class of products and not just the one you sell. You then show them the advantages of your product.

Network Marketing Opportunities Can Make Use of A New System for Selling

She not only developed a totally new way of selling MLM products, but she developed a whole training program that is friendly to non-technical people like me. Through click-by-click training she shows the network marketer how to set up a business machine on the Internet. This machine first attracts people who are looking for a network marketing business that works or who are looking for a particular kind of product.

Then, not only does the machine do attraction marketing but also filters those who show interest to discover those who are “qualified” to do the business or to purchase the product. All this in the context of building relationships and confidence in you,the professional and expert.

I found that finally I was getting a training in marketing principles and able to deliver it in a way that suited my personality. Being an introvert by nature, the effort of looking for clients and then selling products and experiencing constant rejection was mortifying. Through attraction marketing, I could let the Internet do most of the attracting and sorting for me and leave me to deal with those who are truly looking.

Ann Sieg gives away her secrets in an ebook that could make a huge difference in your way of doing network marketing. You’ll find the link in my reference box below.

Author: DLangford
Source: articlerich.com

How to Market a Small Business

6 March, 2010 (12:31) | Business | By: admin

The most important thing to know when marketing a product to people, is to understand what your clients needs are develop stuff around those certain needs. It’s important for you to understand you target market and what they want and what is needed in order for them to be merely interested in your product. Here are some ideas on how to market a small business, which is assumed that the small business is on a very tight budget.

When you are just starting up a small business it is important to determine what your target market is. This is the portion of the population that will be more likely to avail of your product and/or services. By taking the time to understand your target market you will be directly pitching your sales and marketing gimmicks to the correct market, thus, making it more worth your time and hard earned money. That’s why it is important to fully understand how to market a small business.

For small business, it can be very tiresome to compete with bigger companies. Here are some ideas on how to market a small business. First, you can create some sort of postcard that has your advertisement in it. You can direct them to your website or store. You need to understand that you need to have multiple marketing campaigns, so you need to rotate them as you see fit and also vary the way you approach the marketing scheme. Second, you can tie up with another company. You can advertise with them and vice versa. In tying up with a small company, you can almost double your visibility. Third, if you are selling a product, you can host an open house event that will put you directly in contact with customers. If you are selling a product, you can conduct seminars on how their life will be easier if the purchase a certain service. Lastly, you can offer discounts to frequent customers that will surely come back if they know that they can have a discount on something that they really want.

Author: Troy Pryczek
Source: ezinearticles.com

Abandon Hope all yea who enter Advertising Agencies!

5 March, 2010 (15:32) | Business | By: admin

That goes for Clients as well as staff.Because the party is well and truly over. Although truth be told the advertising agencies are the last ones to realize that fact..A very recent report from America states that “one marketing executive who sees agencies as ‘a necessary evil’, rather than a strategic partner”. While another marketer complains “Most senior ad execs appear more comfortable with conventional channels, which they claim are integrated because they have tacked on a website!”Meanwhile the latest blue chip gizmo, Social Networking Sites, is falling out of favour. Clients are experiencing fast diminishing returns on their social networking ad investments. Users are becoming more or less desensitized to advertising. One Client claimed “You won’t make money on it.Meanwhile the press continues to give marketing bad coverage. One leading National newspaper posed the question “What doctrine of marketing teaches that reminding people you won’t answer their question is good PR”?The writer went on to say “I arrived back in London to open a form letter from EDF energy announcing a hike in gas and electricity prices. It trills about “a range of innovative products” to save energy. It tells you the old prices. It is sub-headed: ‘We’re here for you.’”No you *$#-$*# aren’t scream a million householders. Rage. Red mist.Bad marketing. I wonder how much did EDF pay consultants to design a communication that opts for exactly the wrong tone? Repeat three times after me, PR and Marketing gurus: “Delivering a bad-news message in a good-news voice just enrages people.”Ah but the real problem is the fact that advertising/marketing/PR have dehumanized the whole of the communication process, because they really don’t understand the meaning of the word “communication.”I’m not against marketing and PR, I’m against bad marketing and PR, of which there are heaps of examples around.Then there is the rage against data-creep. The situation is apparently become so ridiculous that one man tells us what happened at his local DIY store when he declined to give his postcode. The cashier called the supervisor and they refused to serve him! This is becoming serious marketing decides to whom they sell their products to…what a wacky way to market products!But the really insane part of all this is the fact that, despite all the emerging evidence that conventional media is failing to get the message across they are planning to place your message on the mobile telephone…what is the wonder of the mobile that makes it more effective than any other (failed) medium?Abandon hope if not anything else, at least that way you’ll save some moneyMeanwhile Clients cannot even expect the respect they deserve when it comes to their relationship with their agency. The lack of experience in agencies affects business. IPA director general agrees, “There is a relentless shedding of talent between the ages of 30 and 40 due to pressure on agency costs…the nature of the business is such that to be cost efficient, processes get dumbed down and farmed out to more junior people. There is a tendency to commodity, and that can lead to work being de-skilled”.So yes, come on Mr. Client, please increase your budget with us this year and we promise to place less talented people onto your account….!Meanwhile back in America, research indicates that consumers now rely less and less on marketing messages when in buying mode whilst another key factor is the proliferation of media choice has consigned the notion of a captive audience to the rubbish bin.A fundamental change in Agency thinking is desperately needed. The selling of one-size-fits all messages has to go, agencies and creatives are still clinging to the mass model, either to produce messages or distribute them.Hmmm…here’s an interesting headline, “GM clocks up second worst corporate loss”, – now I wonder how much money they will have to spend on marketing/advertising to make it the first worse corporate loss?

Author: Paul Ashby
Source: articlesfactory.com

Email Marketing – The Lifeblood of Your Business – You Must Get it Right

4 March, 2010 (17:31) | Internet & Online Business | By: admin

Email marketing is of absolutely paramount importance in building your Internet Marketing business. It could be said that it is the lifeblood of your business. After all, if you don’t get your Email Marketing Campaign right you will lose potential customers and your business will fail. You have probably spent many hours, weeks, and perhaps months sourcing your product, designing your website and getting traffic. It would be a complete disaster if your email marketing campaign failed after all that hard work.In this article I want to point out a few things which you need to keep in mind in setting up your campaign.

Your email marketing campaign is not a sales pitch.

Many people, eager to make profits after all their hard work, try to sell their products far too hard and far too early. There was a time on the Internet when this could and did work, but this is simply not the case these days and if you try to sell too early you may lose your potential customers forever.

People who research these things reckon that on average it takes about seven contacts before a customer will buy. So be patient, you’re in this for the long-term.

Relationship Building

Your first emails should be directed at building a relationship with your customers.

You have probably offered them a free product, maybe an ebook, in order to get them to visit your website and in your first emails you need to offer them even more free gifts. This gives them confidence that you’re not a “get rich quick” person and if they like your free gifts they are much more likely to buy your products later.

Friendly and helpful and honest messages.

Write your messages in a friendly and helpful way.It helps to imagine that you’re having a cup of coffee with a friend and telling them about your business.

Always make sure that you are providing information which is helpful to them and, very important, be absolutely honest with everything you say. If your customer thinks for one second that you are telling lies you will lose them. Forever.

Keep your messages concise and informative.

It’s quite o.k. to talk a little about yourself in order to create a friendly atmosphere in your emails but be careful you don’t spend too much time on this or you may lose their interest. Things going on in your life may be very important and interesting to you but they may be of no interest at all to your customers. Remember that when someone opens your email you have only about five seconds to convince them to read to the end of your message.

Regular contact.

You don’t want to fill your customer’s in-box with messages on a daily basis but it does pay to keep in regular contact. You don’t want them to receive a message and not be able to recall who you are.

As with most things there is a happy medium. Many marketers make their first contact immediately after sign-up, the next two messages within the first week and then on a weekly basis.

Call to action

Be sure to include a clear call to action in your messages. Don’t leave them confused and wondering why you sent the message in the first place. Tell them what links to click, what they will receive when they do and why this is the greatest and most helpful thing they will ever need.

Quality Products

Make sure you only ever offer them high quality products. You should always buy and use the product yourself or research it very carefully. Occasionally even an excellent product may not be exactly what they want but if you give a quick refund they will buy from you again in the future. If you attempt to sell them a sub- standard product this will have a disastrous effect on your business. You will lose their trust and their custom.!

Lastly but very importantly

Test and Review

Test and review your Marketing Campaign on a regular basis. You can do this through your autoresponder. Keep in mind that things which worked well last month may not be working so well now. When you’ve finished testing and reviewing-test and review again.

Don’t take you eye off the ball! Make sure you get it right.

Author: Peter Neves
Source: ezinearticles.com

Secrets For Writing A Marketing Plan For A Home Based Business Owner

3 March, 2010 (14:30) | Business | By: admin

There is no real secret to writing a marketing plan for a small business, but unless you have been guided through the steps I can understand why you may think it is difficult. It really is a matter of following some steps, and truly, all business need to have a marketing plan so that they can give themselves the best chance to stay in business for the the long term.

Let’s break down the steps for to create a marketing plan.

Creating a marketing plan is a process of answering questions step by step and building a customer profile, then marketing to them. It is not so difficult once you get the answers:

1. What finance have you got available for marketing?

2. Who is your target market for your product or service? Age, sex, and other data to distinguish your customer.

3. How far afield do you need to market your product to get the sales you require?

4. How can you reach your target market?

5. How does your competion reach your target market?

6. Is there marketing that you can do effectively and at a budget?

7. Do you think that you have the skills to do your own marketing or will you need some help from a professional?

8. If the cost of using a professional is out of the question, work out what marketing you feel you can do effectively with your skills?

Keep it simple and just answer these questions in bullet form. When you have got the answers to these questions, then work out your marketing plan for the next 12 months. Write down each month and start planning your marketing for the year.

When planning ahead for 12 months remember to have a good hard look at how economic circumstances like Easter, Christmas, school holidays and such like will affect your product sales. It could have a good affect on sales or it could slow down sales at certain times of the year.

Allocating your funds

Once you have each month of the year worked out you then can consider how to allocate funds for each month and then for each campaign that you intend to run.

Keep in mind that if for example, you have a boom sales time for Christmas you will need to start your advertising in early October. Starting in December would not be the time to start a campaign. The concept of marketing is to plant the seed, remind customers of your business and get the sale when they are ready. Sometimes you will get immediate results from your marketing but the essence of marketing is to keep the business name in front of your customers so that when they are ready to buy they will think of you.

It would be great if we could market once and get the sale immediately, but unfortunately it just does not work that way. We would all be millionaires if that was the case!

Detailing the marketing plan

With the full 12 months mapped out it is time to break the next three months down into detail. Work out exactly how you are going to market over the next three months and where you are going to spend your dollar.

If you work in 3 month blocks it gives you a chance to evaluate if the marketing is working and if not, change it for the next three months.

What you have not managed to put together is a marketing ‘plan’. If it is not working you simply change the plan. Each and every home based business will need a different plan to suit their circumstances, their product or service and their funds available. Keep it simple, don’t complicate it and I am sure you will be able to work your way through it. Whatever else you do as a home based business owner, you need to market your business so that you keep getting a continual flow of customers.

Copyright (c) 2010 Kaye Dennan

Author: Kaye Dennan
Source: articlerich.com

Internet Marketing – Not As Easy As it Seems – Pt X

2 March, 2010 (12:32) | Internet & Online Business | By: admin

OK, if you’ve been following this series of articles you know that, although I believe you can start your own online business and be successful, it is not a ’slam dunk’.

You need to focus on the basics and be persistent in your approach to business in much the same way you would if you opened a brand new ‘brick and mortar’ business.

In this article I wanted to quickly touch on one of the most often used and valid methods of obtaining targeted traffic to your website – Email Marketing.

Now, this type of marketing has been available since the advent of email. For a long time it worked very well basically because it was something new and intriguing. Those marketers that started at that time were pioneers and reaped the financial rewards of being the first with the most.

Today, things have changed quite a bit.

1. Email Marketing is no longer unique.

2. SPAM laws make it more difficult to use this form of marketing and added rules and regulations that you must follow in order to avoid stiff penalties.

3. Due to the large amount of SPAM, the majority of emails either never reach the reader or are never opened.

4. If opened, most email is still thrown away into the trash because of the bad history most readers have had with past offers.

5. The sheer volume of email has caused a ripple effect so that the reader receives the same offer from a wide range of marketers creating further doubt in the authenticity of the products being offered.

6. SPAM filters and the like tend to keep large numbers of legitimate emails from ever reaching their audience.

And the list goes on and on….BUT

There is still a market to be made with email. However, in my opinion, it is just one minor part of the marketing funnel you need to create in order to reach your targeted market.

Now, that I’ve made you feel miserable about the prospects of email marketing, let me tell you some of the pluses:

1. Email marketing has become much more technologically savvy.

2. Email marketing is very inexpensive.

3. Email marketing is very easy to implement and following the rules in not a major problem.

4. There are numerous web based services (i.e. safe lists etc.) that you can use to simplify the process and reach large numbers of people.

5. More importantly, you can create your own email list of double opted in leads (double opted in means that the lead has not only requested to be on your list but has also responded to a second email confirming their intentions).

This ‘double opted in’ list takes time to build but once created it is an open opportunity to communicate with targeted, interested potential customers in a very inexpensive manner.

In my next couple of articles I’ll review the creation of this type of list and the use of opt-in pages and ‘autoresponders’ so be sure to come back..

Author: Cary Ganz
Source: ezinearticles.com

Online Marketing Agency – An Effective Way of Marketing a Brand

1 March, 2010 (12:32) | Internet & Online Business | By: admin

Marketing is all about reaching out to the potential customers in the best possible manner and retaining them. There are exclusive benefits of marketing a product on the internet. Online marketing agency brings together both the creative as well as the technical aspects of the internet including sales, design, advertising and development.There are many benefits associated with the internet marketing like the availability of information as potential consumers can learn about your products and services and thus access them easily at any time of the day. Companies using the services of online marketing agency save a lot of money because of a reduced requirement of sales work force. Compared to conventional media such as print, TV and radio, internet marketing have a low cost of entry. It offers a better sense of accountability for advertisers because it is easy to keep a tab on the response, exposure and efficiency of internet through web analytics.

As developing your business on the internet is a complex task, you need the assistance of experts working in this field. You need the artistic skills of layout and design; the technical skills of scripting and programming; business skills of feasibility study, business model testing and business model conceptualization and the language skills of content and copy writing. That is something that an average web designing company cannot handle. Here you need the aid of an online marketing agency.

Services offered by online marketing agency:

As these marketing agencies are well aware of the latest market trend, they are an ideal choice for an online branding of the product. Majority of these marketing agencies in Australia are Branding Sydney companies and products in a productive manner. Check out some services provided by these marketing agencies:

Using the latest designs and techniques, they create a site for you with remarkable features that ensure great promotion for your company, brand or services.
They help you build the site in an effective manner-keeping pace with the latest trend and alluring the potential clients to a particular brand.
They offer authenticity and novelty in options and designs trying to enhance every possibility of keeping your product’s recommendation.

They manage the site by providing the appropriate information to avoid digression. In this way, a user or visitor gets only the relevant information and not the time consuming and unwanted advertisements that also lower down the speed of internet as well. An Online marketing agency provides a host of services like joining a network if you plan to opt for Affiliate Marketing. You can also select from various options like online copywriting, content management system, flash production, website design and development, Search Engine Marketing, website auditing and usability, E-Mail Marketing Services or a combination of these services. These marketing agencies assist you in affiliate marketing scheme, search engine optimization and pay per click.

Big marketing agencies are more expensive but they produce more work and have a team of highly efficient professionals. However, independent online agencies are more specialized and do most of the things in – house.

Author: Piter Smith
Source: ezinearticles.com

Affiliate Marketing – The Formula of Success

28 February, 2010 (12:30) | Internet & Online Business | By: admin

The internet has made it to almost all the places and all the homes in the entire world. People are fulfilling almost all of their commercial needs from the internet. There are literally thousands of online stores and people are happy to purchase the products from there instead of going out and visiting a store in their local market. This has helped the internet marketers to make money from the internet. The people are willing to buy so there are marketers who are ready to offer his products to the people.

The affiliate marketing has also taken its inspiration from this trend. Because of the changing habits of the people, the marketers are finding it easy to sell the products to the people. The companies have started offering their products to all the people to sell them. If the people succeed and make sales, they are rewarded for their efforts. They are paid amount of commission for every such sale. This has helped the internet market to grow a lot in the recent years.

If you are new to the internet affiliate marketing, you would first look for the perfect success formula. Mostly you will end up in the hands of the online scam and you will get nothing at all. You may, in fact, end up losing some of your hard earned dollars to them. If you are seriously looking for the perfect success formula then I would say you are not looking for the right thing. In fact, the success formula is different for everyone. With every market and every product, the marketers have to devise a different success formula. Repeating the same success formula over and over again will give you nothing.

Though there is no one such formula, but there are certain things which are part and parcel of every success formula. Here are the few things which you will find to be the most valuable ingredients of every successful affiliate marketing formula.

Author: Adel Shea
Source: ezinearticles.com